riptide.

"Bekah - how do you find all of these adventures?"

When you're a girl that almost falls into the "severe" category when tested for social anxiety, this is not a question you expect to have directed towards you. When you find that it has been, it puts a shyly confident smirk on your face every time you think about it.

For much of my life I've allowed myself to be defined by my fear of failure. If I didn't know for a fact that I would succeed, I avoided the activity at all costs. I was consumed by the idea of appearing incompetent. Incompetent people, in my mind, brought nothing to the table and thus were not valued within a community and left behind. I had to make a choice to shift my mentality in order to live a life more abundant.

I find these adventures because I decided that the world is a beautiful place that deserves to be explored and experienced - despite an occasionally debilitating mental illness. I find these adventures by deciding to rise above my anxiety and ignoring that little voice in my head telling me that when I fail I'm going to look like a fool.

The photo above that found it's way to my Instagram doesn't simply represent a (phenomenal, if I may toot my own horn) sandwich that I made. Instead it tells me a story about how I tried something new despite the fact that it could come out as a failure. In fact, it did start out as a perceived failure. The hummus wasn't quite the right consistency [read: it wasn't the consistency I had planned for - the chunkiness adds great texture!], nor was it packing a punch of flavor [again: preconceived ideas can really be a bitch because it just needed time to sit]. 

Social media has a reputation of advertising a life better than the one actually being lived. Instagram is a medium I utilize to document experiences that range from everyday to extraordinary. My posts remind me that beauty can be found in any experience. So maybe my account does portray a life of adventure - but that's because I choose to treat every moment of my short time on this earth as such.